[FILM] MUHAMMAD THE LAST PROPHET

[Judul: Muhammad The Last Prophet | Pengarah: Richard Rich | Rilis: 2002 | Nilai: 4 dari 5 bintang]

[1]
Ini adalah film sejarah: sejarah Kanjeng Nabi Muhammad.

[2]
Menghadirkan cerita Kanjeng Nabi dalam sebuah film animasi bukanlah ide buruk. Apalagi jika animasinya bagus, digarap dengan menarik oleh orang-orang yang ahli dibidangnya, tentu akan menambah kesan tertentu bagi penontonnya. Muhammad The Last Prophet ini, menurut saya, adalah salah satu yang tidak begitu buruk atau lumayan dalam melakukannya.

[3]
Setiap upaya menghadirkan sejarah Kanjeng Nabi dalam sebuah film adalah sebentuk tafsir atas sejarah. Bagaimana tidak! Versi sejarah Kanjeng Nabi itu banyak sekali, dan setiap versinya adalah tafsir. Memilih satu versi di antaranya berarti mengurangi kekayaan sumber sejarah. Ditambah lagi, ada banyak detil cerita yang harus dipangkas dalam film ini demi mengejar durasi. Dengan kata lain, film ini juga harus menghadapi sebuah resiko yang tidak ringan.

Dari sudut pandang yang lain, setiap upaya menghadirkan kisah Kanjeng Nabi dalam sebuah film adalah sebentuk keberpihakan atas sejarah. Sekali lagi, bagaimana tidak! Versi sejarah Kanjeng Nabi itu banyak sekali, dan setiap versinya adalah keberpihakan. Memilih satu versi di antaranya berarti menyeleksi mana yang paling cocok dengan keberpihakannya. Asalkan penonton jeli, beberapa detil yang tidak ditampilkan dalam film ini “seakan” hendak menghindari resiko besar yang akan ditanggung. Situasi seperti ini, menurut saya, memang tidak terhindarkan dalam setiap upaya memfilmkan sejarah Kanjeng Nabi.

Mungkin ada baiknya jika disebutkan beberapa contoh dari kedua kondisi itu. Coba sebutkan siapa nama asli Abû Jahl, pamanda—dan satu dari sekian orang yang paling benci dakwah—Kanjeng Nabi? Tentu saja, nama aslinya adalah ‘Amr ibn Hisyâm, kunyah-nya Abû al-Hakam. Tapi, sejak detik awal film ini dimulai hingga akhir, tidak ada sekali pun nama aslinya disebut-sebut dalam setiap dialog. Bahkan orang-orang yang sekomplotan dengannya (seperti Abû Lahb dan Abû Sufyân) juga memanggilnya dengan sebutan Abû Jahl dan dia menjawab panggilan itu seperti tidak ada yang salah. Ini sulit diterima akal sehat. Mana ada orang yang mau dipanggil dengan sebutan Abû Jahl? Nama Abû Jahl—jika dialihbahasakan kira-kira menjadi “Si Super Dungu”—adalah ledekan (laqâb qabîh) dari kaum Muslim kepada si Amr ibn Hisyâm karena sikap penentangannya kepada Kanjeng Nabi yang tiada kenal menyerah.

Contoh lain, ada banyak tokoh yang tidak dimunculkan gambarnya dalam film ini. Kanjeng Nabi tentu saja termasuk diantaranya. Apa mau dikata, umat Islam amat tidak suka kalau sosok Nabinya digambar-gambar untuk tujuan apapun karena memang ada larangan untuk melakukannya. Meski tidak semua umat Muslim menyepakati hal ini, tapi para penggarap film ini memilih untuk tidak menampilkan gambar Kanjeng Nabi, tentu seperti yang saya bilang di atas, karena hendak menghindari resiko yang akan ditanggung. Yang unik, selain Kanjeng Nabi Muhammad, para Khulafaur Rosyidin dan Hamzah, salah satu paman Kanjeng Nabi, juga tidak muncul gambarnya di film. Apakah menurut para penggarap film ini gambar mereka juga terlarang? Sejauh saya tahu, umat Muslim Indonesia tidak keberatan dengan gambar-gambar mereka, entah di negara-negara lain.

Selain dua contoh di atas, ada banyak pemangkasan cerita lain. Asalkan bisa jeli, yakin, ada banyak yang bisa diungkap dari film ini selain sekedar jalannya cerita.

[4]
Tala‘a al-badru ‘alaynā
Min thanīyāti al-wadā‘
Wajab al-shukru ‘alaynā
Mā da‘ā lillāhi dā‘
Ayyuha al-mab‘ūthu fīnā
Ji’ta bil-amri al-mutā‘
Ji’ta sharaft al-madīnah
Marḥaban yā khayra dā‘

Wahai bulan purnama yang terbit ke atas kita
Dari lembah al-Wadā‘.
Kita harus berucap syukur
Di mana seruan adalah kepada Allah.
Wahai engkau yang dibesarkan di kalangan kami
Datang dengan seruan untuk dipatuhi
Engkau telah membawa kemuliaan di kota ini
Selamat datang, penyeru terbaik

[5]
Pandangan di atas adalah cara pandang “kecurigaan”. Kalau mau pakai pandangan yang lebih sejuk, film ini menawarkan kebijaksanaan yang amat kaya. Tak diragukan lagi, sejarah kehidupan Kanjeng Nabi adalah sejarah keteladanan. Dan film ini memang lebih diarahkan untuk menjadi semacam jendela bagi mereka yang merindukan panutan ketimbang sekedar kontroversi sejarah yang bikin mumet.[]

photocredit: wikipedia.com dan opinimasding.blogspot.com

SIVA, ARIF MUHA MM AD, AND INDONESIA’S MINISTRY OF TOURISM

Near Garut in West Java, pilgrims follow a road through a village, cross a lake by raft, then climb a small hill that is in the middle of a ring of mountains. On its summit is Candi Cangkuan, a temple dedicated to Siva and attributed to the eighth-century kingdom of Galuh. Alongside the temple is a grave in the Islamic form with upright stones carved in arabesque shape at each end. The tomb bears no inscription, but a board carries the information, in Indonesian in the Roman alphabet, that the grave holds Eyang Embah Dalem Arif Muhammad. The Javanese titles link the bearer of the Islamic name to the Mataram palace.

Pamphlets explain that Arif Muhammad was a warrior of Mataram who, after defeat at Batavia, came to the Garut area with his followers. Descendants of his seven children still live in a small compound several meters from the grave site.

The site is under care of the government’s tourism ministry. Until 1966 Siva’s temple was foundation and rubble only, its sculptures gone, its building blocks taken to construct the tombs of Arif Muhammad and the many individuals buried around him. In that year excavation began at the site under the direction of archaeologists, and the graves surrounding Arif Muhammad’s were relocated to a cemetery further off. The cleared site was fenced and provided with a ticket booth, picnic tables, museum, and curator. A collection of seventeenth-century books in the museum comprises a Koran, a book of Islamic law, a grammar, and a book of exegesis, all penned in black ink in Arabic script.

Hindu god and Muslim warrior turned agricultural pioneer share a mountaintop. The site is on the tourist itinerary. Some of the visitors come to pray and hold night vigils at this site; some report cures of physical and mental illnesses. The government packaged a Muslim piety that retains an association of high places and Hindu remains with holiness, and is still in thrall to Javanese royalty, into a tourist outing following eradication of communism and communist men and women from Java.

It is a managed representation of the past to citizens of a modern republic. This specifically Javanese Muslim culture is now being challenged by an Indonesian Islamic consciousness inspired, not by Java’s past, but by today’s Iran, Egypt, and Afghanistan.

photocredit: m.tubasmedia.com

CALIPHS AND SULTANS

Muhammad’s  successors    took   the   title  caliph,  which    means  “deputy” and signified deputy for Muhammad and God. Very soon rival dynasties of caliphs ruled and fought each other. By the eleventh century, rulers calling themselves sultan (meaning “power,” “authority”) challenged the caliph’s claim to supreme authority. When Indonesian rulers converted, they joined an Islamic world community divided politically into numerous states. Archipelago rulers took the title of both sultan and caliph to emphasize that they, and not their ulamas, were the supreme authority in all matters civil and religious.

THE KORAN, SHARIA, AND MEN LEARNED IN RELIGION

The Koran (alternative forms: Quran, Qur-an, Qur’an) is the written text of the words heard by Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years. It was assembled in its current form by the mid-seventh century. The text consists of 114 surahs (sections), whose length varies from a few verses to as many as 286 (surah 2). The content includes praises to God, exposition of correct behavior and belief, descriptions of paradise, sins, and punishments, and retelling of key stories from the Jewish Torah and the Christian New Testament. Sayings attributed to Muhammad by his followers and stories of his life were compiled in the Hadith in the ninth century. Koran and Hadith are Islam’s key sources. Muslims believe the Koran was spoken by God in Arabic. The acts of reciting and hearing the Koran are considered to confer God’s blessing. Religion classes commence with recitation. Indonesian kings paid for public recitations of the Koran on Thursday nights, in the evenings of Ramadhan, and at ritual occasions such as funerals.

Arising from the belief that the Koran is divine speech were requirements that all Muslims should learn Arabic and reluctance to translate the Koran into other languages. Its transmission was by recitation and by hand-copied pages bound into book form. Although the printing press   reached    Muslim    lands   from   Europe    in  1492,   Muslim kings banned setting Arabic into type until the early nineteenth century. As a result, copies of the Koran were limited and study of the Koran confined to small numbers of men in Muslim communities. The first Koran   printed   in   Arabic   in   Indonesia   was   published   in   Palembang   in 1854. Commentaries on the Koran were composed in Arabic by native speakers of Indonesian languages. The first translation of the Koran into modern Indonesian was published in Jakarta by the Japanese military   command   in   1944. There   is   evidence   of   a   seventeenth-century Malay translation made in Aceh and an eighteenth-century Koran with translation in the Bugis and Makasar languages following each line of Arabic.

The   Koran   has   been   known   in   the West   through   the   polemics   of Christian theologians since the seventh century. It was first printed in Arabic in Vienna in 1530. A Dutch-language translation of the Koran in the nineteenth century excited the anger of those Indonesians who felt it a disgrace to translate the Koran into a language of Christian Europe.

Islamic law, known by the Arabic word sharia (syaria in modern Indonesian spelling), codifies rules contained in the Koran and Hadith. Councils of senior religious scholars determine whether something not discussed in the Koran is lawful for Muslims and publicize the decision through   a fatwah.

Religious   scholars   are   known   by   the   Arabic   word ulama, the plural form of the word alim (scholar) that has passed into the Indonesian language to mean one scholar and many. The duty of ulamas is to ensure that sharia is the basis of the state’s administration, and to teach. Pious Muslims honor ulamas by kissing their hand. In Javanese Muslim culture drawing near to an ulama is believed to confer God’s blessing.   In   theory,   as   men   learned   in   the   Koran,   ulamas   were   above kings. In Indonesian histories they were often their rivals for power.

photocredi: newsrealblog.com

MENJENGUK

Rasulullah —semoga Allah melimpahkan sholawat dan salam-Nya— bersabda bahwa pada hari kiamat nanti Allah —Maha Suci dan Maha Mulia— akan berkata:

“Wahai manusia, dulu aku sakit tapi kenapa kalian tidak menjengukku?”

Manusia jadi bingung. “Bagaimana bisa hamba menjenguk-Mu, sementara Engkau adalah penguasa alam semesta, ya Tuhan?”

“Bukankah kau tahu bahwa ada seseorang yang sedang sakit namun tidak kau jenguk? Kau pun juga tahu bahwa kalau kau menjenguknya, kau akan menemukan-Ku di sampingnya.”

>> Hadits Muslim melalui Abu Hurairah, no. 4661.

THE MEANING OF REVELATION

It is said that after Muhammad and the prophets revelation does not descend upon anyone else.

Why not?

In fact it does, but then it is not called ‘revelation.’

It is what the Prophet referred to when he said, ‘The believer sees with the Light of God.’

When the believer looks with ‘The believer sees with the Light of God.’

When the believer looks with God’s Light, he sees all things: the first and the last, the present and the absent.

For how can anything be hidden from God’s Light?

And if something is hidden, then it is not the Light of God.

Therefore the meaning of revelation exists, even if it is not called revelation.

Fihi ma fihi [Discourses of Rumi]
quoted from William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love:
The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi